Monday, March 3, at the Marconi Hall of the CNR headquarters in Rome, a conference titled “The Italian Digital Platform for Disaster Mitigation: Progress, Challenges, and Future Perspectives” took place, held within the framework of the plenary assembly of Spoke 5 ‘Environment and Natural Disasters’ of ICSC – National Research Center in HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing. The event provided an opportunity for discussion and in-depth analysis of the results achieved over the past two years thanks to the multidisciplinary efforts of Spoke 5, dedicated to environmental monitoring and the creation of ‘digital twins’ useful for planning prevention and risk mitigation interventions for both the population and infrastructure in relation to natural disasters. This work led to the development of a prototype of an integrated digital platform, hosted on ICSC’s computing infrastructure, which will monitor and help mitigate the socioeconomic impacts of the country’s natural and environmental risks.
Participants
Highlighting the cross-cutting importance of the topics addressed was the large attendance at the conference, especially for a country like Italy, characterized by high vulnerability and which has seen in recent years an exponential increase in expenditure due to damages caused by extreme weather events. The event brought together more than 60 researchers, journalists, and representatives from institutions and industrial entities such as: Casa Italia Department, Civil Protection Department, Special Office for the Reconstruction of L’Aquila, Commissarial Structure for the 2016 Earthquake, Basin Authority, several Regional Agencies of the South, RFI, ENI, and TERNA.
It was therefore an ideal occasion to present in preview the platform developed by Spoke 5, which aims to serve as a true national control center for environmental risk mapping. Reflections on future developments were also based on the fruitful interaction with the stakeholders present, focusing on the potential and valorization of the experiences gained through their sharing, and on the models developed for the main hazards and the resulting risks impacting the Italian territory.
Comment by Roberto Bellotti
“The creation of such a platform,” declared Roberto Bellotti, leader of ICSC’s Spoke 5, “represents an important milestone for our Spoke and for the entire ICSC ecosystem. This achievement was made possible thanks to the establishment of the National Center in 2022, which successfully brought together multidisciplinary communities within Spoke 5 and enabled them to collaborate on a common goal. From today, the primary mission of the Spoke will be to engage political and institutional stakeholders in a participatory process that allows this platform to have a real impact on decision-making processes, but most importantly, on citizens’ lives. This message was well received and welcomed by several stakeholders, who emphasized the need for a citizen awareness pathway to ensure that these tools can fully perform the functions for which they were designed.”